Colorado ranked third in states most bothered by robocalls in 2019. The data was compiled by Let's Talk, a cell phone analytics firm that compares different carriers and plans.
In the wake of Congress passing new regulations on robocalls last month, Let's Talk decided to track which states received the most calls. They did so by looking at reported complaints and the number of blocked calls by robocall blocking apps.
Maddie Peterson, a researcher at Let's Talk, said the research was compiled from two different data sets.
"One is from the FTC, and it is a data set that tracks how many complaints were made for each state to the FTC about robocalls. The other data set we used from a robocall blocking app," she said.
Peterson said it will take a while for legislation to influence the robocall industry, as is was just signed into law in December. Residents in Colorado were estimated to have been robocalled more than 844 million times in 2019.
"Basically, we went through, and asked how many complaints are being made per person in each state," said Peterson. "We found that Colorado is actually making the most complaints per person in the whole country."
That doesn't necessarily mean that more robocalls are happening in Colorado. The states ranked as being the most bothered by robocalls were those that not only had a high volume of calls, but also residents who lodged complaints.
Other findings:
- Eastern coastal states and Western states topped the "most bothered" by robocalls rankings this year, while states in the Midwest and Central U.S. were "less bothered."
- Scams made up the largest portion (45.7%) of robocalls nationwide in 2019, followed by alerts and reminders (22.7%), payment reminders (20.3%) and telemarketing calls (11.3%).
- Scams are on the rise. Over the past three years, they've risen from making up just 17.6% of robocalls to making up more than 45% of them.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story stated that Colorado was tied with Indiana for third most bothered by robocalls in 2019. It has been corrected to state that Colorado was ranked third — Indiana was tied for third least bothered in 2019.